


we were born alone (and we die alone)

by fortunehasgivenup



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Death, F/M, Immortality, Loss, Melancholy, Sex, The Old Guard AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:06:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28407459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortunehasgivenup/pseuds/fortunehasgivenup
Summary: When you've died as many times as Beth has, pain is all relative.
Relationships: Beth Boland/Rio, Ruby Hill/Stan Hill
Comments: 19
Kudos: 91





	we were born alone (and we die alone)

**Author's Note:**

> You don't need to have read/seen The Old Guard to understand this, you just have to know that the main characters are immortal, not aging past when they die for the first time. They just keep coming back to life. This fic is...a little bleak.

Morocco, 2020

Beth has fought a lot of battles in her life. She’s spent lifetimes honing her senses. Devoted years and years and years to developing her trust in them.

So she knows when she’s being followed.

She’s pretty sure she knows who it is too. It would be easy to turn and confront him now, but where’s the fun in that?

Instead, she leads him down an alley that should have a blind corner.

Smiling when she’s proven right, she ducks behind the odd little outcrop of the building and waits for him to reveal himself.

“Should I be worried?” he calls out before rounding the corner.

He looks good. He always looks good.

Not taking off her sunglasses, she pushes herself away from the wall and walks over to him. “Depends,” she answers his question, “on what you’ve been up to.”

Rio laughs and lifts his own sunglasses so that they’re perched on top of his head. “Nothing good.”

She punches him in the arm. “You seen the others yet?”

He lifts a shoulder, drawing her attention to his bag. “Nah, I just got in too.”

They fall into step together.

It isn’t far to the safe house and Ruby’s waiting for them when they get there.

“You’re late,” she scolds, but she’s smiling as she does it, hugging Beth first, then Rio. “Stan’s getting us some lunch.”

“You didn’t cook for us?” Rio asks, following her inside the house.

“I’m tired,” Ruby snaps. “You gonna cook? No? Then go somewhere else.”

Rio retreats into the house, towards his bedroom she assumes.

“How have you been?” Beth asks, hugging Ruby again.

Ruby sighs. “We’ve been good. How about you?”

Beth looks away. She can’t lie to Ruby. Hasn’t been able to for at least four centuries.

“Have you seen Annie?”

Beth nods. “We make sure to see each other at least once a year.”

“And Rio?” Ruby’s question is pointed. “You came in together.”

“It’s the first I’ve seen of him since we left Thailand.” Beth gets herself a bottle of water and hops onto the counter, even though it makes Ruby scowl at her.

“That was almost twenty years ago.”

“Time flies,” Beth says, breaking the seal and unscrewing the lid.

Ruby studies her. “I don’t get you two. Stan and I spent like a year apart and I couldn’t stand it. Meanwhile you and -“

“What are you gossiping about?” Rio cuts in, now bagless. He knows exactly what they’re talking about.

“About how you’re going bald,” Beth tells him. “You should just shave it all off and give up.”

Rio snorts.

——————————————

Thailand, 2002

Beth ducks to the side, hissing when Rio’s blade slices across her bicep.

She manages to dance out of the way of his next blow, then parries the next.

“You’re still shit with a sword,” Rio taunts as he blocks her returning strike, then backs away to regain his footing.

Beth pulls one of the knives on her belt and throws it at him before he even notices what she’s doing. It hits him dead in the forehead and he drops like a stone.

“Shit with a sword,” Beth mutters. “If you say so.”

It’s easier to heal without the weapon still in the wound, so Beth goes to his body and carefully pulls the knife free with a disgusted grimace. Head wounds always bled a lot and it wasn’t exactly her favourite way to go either.

As she wipes the knife, she can see his flesh already knitting itself back together.

He groans.

“You were saying?” Beth says, turning the knife this way and that to check that there’s nothing left on it.

“That wasn’t a sword,” Rio snaps, pushing himself up.

Beth smiles. “Still killed you.”

He scowls at her, wiping the blood from his forehead. “You’re cleaning this up,” he tells her, “before Stan notices. This is his favourite carpet.”

Beth slides the knife back into place. “I’m pretty sure the loser has to clean up.”

“You cheated. We had agreed that it was swords.”

“A knife is just a very short sword,” Beth says, holding up her hands to illustrate her point.

“And an assault rifle is just a fast cannon,” Annie says, coming into the room with a bowl of ice cream.

Beth rolls her eyes. “Oh, so now you’re the referee?”

“I’m pretty sure that you’re the one who told me that I needed to honour my agreements,” Annie reminds her.

“That was ages ago,” Beth says. When honour meant something.

Annie just laughs. “How about this - you both lose and you have to clean up together.”

“Or,” Rio drawls, “we just make you do it.”

“Nope,” Annie backs out of the room, “I’m busy. Lots to do. Very important.”

Beth chuckles as she disappears upstairs.

“We have to move on soon,” Rio says quietly.

She nods back. “Take time apart,” she suggests.

“Annie won’t like that.”

She looks at him. “Annie doesn’t like a lot of things that are good for her. Now help me clean this before Stan and Ruby get here.”

———————————————

Nemea, 394 BC

Beth chases after the man. Somewhere behind them, the battle is still raging on, but Beth doesn’t care anymore. Not since this particular soldier had nearly beheaded her. He was good. Infuriatingly good. To her, that was a challenge these days.

The trees aren’t densely packed, but they’re close enough that the space where she catches up to him feels like a clearing.

He turns, but his sword isn’t in his hands yet, giving her the advantage.

Beth snarls, throwing herself at the man with knives in both of her hands. The first, she plants in his shoulder and the second, which she was aiming at his neck, gets blocked by his arm.

She’s strong, but he’s stronger and nearly flings her across the clearing. She sees stars when her head connects with a tree and groans.

Her head is floating, but she’s aware enough to watch him pull the knife from his body and toss it aside. He grunts, rolls his shoulders and neck. Then he does something strange and lifts his opposite hand up and rubs at the knife wound.

For a minute, she wonders if he’s trying to die from infection, but then she sees that the skin beneath is unmarked. No, not unmarked. Not entirely. She watches the last of the knife wound close up, just like hers do.

“You’re like me.”

He turns like he had forgotten that she was there.

“You heal,” Beth says. “Don’t die.”

“Your accent is atrocious,” he says to her in Greek. Right, she’s fighting alongside the Athenians today. “Prove it.”

Before Beth can reply, he’s drawing his sword across her throat and fuck, she should have seen that coming.

When she gasps her first breath, it’s clear that it’s been a few minutes, but not long. He’s still cleaning her blood from his sword.

His eyes widen. He hadn’t quite believed her when she said it, but now, faced with the truth, he knows.

“I’ve never met anyone like me,” he says, staring at her.

Beth swallows. “I have.” She rolls her shoulder. “We should get further from the battle.”

He follows when she leaves.

——————————————————

Morocco, 2020

Rio stirs the sugar into his espresso and pretends to be reading the newspaper.

“Could you be more obvious?” Beth asks him.

He looks at her.

“You’re still terrible at surveillance, even after all these years,” she scolds, taking his paper away.

“Oh?” He sips his coffee. “How do you figure?”

Beth grins, setting her forearms on the table and leaning towards him. “You’re sitting at a table with a beautiful woman and you’re reading the paper?” She tsks. “Hardly believable.”

He snorts. “Maybe you’re not my type.”

“Then stop trying to look down my shirt.”

She can’t see his eyes through his sunglasses, but she can tell that he’s amused. “Why? Ain’t nothing I’ve never seen before.”

Beth makes a face. “What have you been up to, talking like that?”

“Wouldst thou prefer that I return to such outdated modes of speech, dear lady?” Rio drawls.

“No,” she threw a packet of sugar at him, “but you could answer the question.”

“Curious?”

“Always,” Beth says quietly.

Rio’s amusement fades and he looks away. “Detroit for most of it. You?”

“Wandering. Haven’t felt much like staying anywhere,” she admits. “It’s like the second that I sit still, I get restless.”

He hums. “But when you’ve seen the whole world, where else will you go?” He looks pensive. “You taking care of yourself?”

“Of course I have,” Beth replies, waving a hand at herself.

“You’d look just the same even if you weren’t,” Rio reminds her. “I can’t see inside your head when you don’t want me to. Hardly fair.”

“I can’t see inside yours either.”

“Liar,” Rio says. “You know where I stand.”

She did. He’d made it clear more than once over the centuries. Sometimes she was tempted by it, staying by his side for years and years, roaming and settling down together. But there was no peace for people like them and it became harder and harder to lose what they had.

Beth doesn’t see Rio’s hand until it’s too late to pull hers back and he twines their fingers together.

“When you’ve seen the whole world,” he says, “the whole world’s home.”

Beth’s home burned long ago, even before she’d met Rio.

———————————————————

Nemea, 394 BC

His name is Rio. Well, one of them is. He admits that he has several, but his people name for family and village. He doesn’t dare use the name he was given at his birth any longer.

“How long have you been like this?” he asks.

“How long have you?” Beth shoots right back.

He grins. “Thirty two years,” he replies.

“A baby then,” she says, sharpening her knife.

He scoffs. “How old are you?”

“The first time I died was almost two hundred years ago.”

She can see the shock on his face. He hadn’t been expecting that long.

“So we live forever,” Rio says.

“No, we can die.” Her thoughts go to her old teacher, the man she’d called brother.

“Are there others?”

Beth shakes her head. “Not now.”

“I’ve dreamt of you.”

Beth nods. “We share dreams.”

———————————————————

Morocco, 2020

It’s gone to shit, because there’s a reason that they don’t do repeats.

Beth pushes herself up from the floor, spitting blood and bullets out onto the ground next to her. She can see Rio in her peripheral, doing the same.

The soldiers are frantically trying to reload their weapons, but they’re frightened. They’ve just fired hundreds of shots into Beth, Rio, Ruby, Stan, and Annie. But they’re getting up again.

She yanks her axe from her back and slices the soldier closest to her across the face. He goes down with a shout and from there it’s an all out slaughter.

By the time that they’re done, Beth’s covered in blood.

When she turns, Rio’s standing behind her.

Their eyes meet.

She doesn’t need to ask if he’s alright and neither does he. Nothing can hurt either of them.

———————————————————

France, 1817

Beth tosses her cards down with a grin. Rio sighs, but he stands and strips his shirt, tosses it aside.

“You two are weird,” Annie says, gathering up the cards to deal them again. “You should just fuck.”

Their eyes meet and they both snort.

“You think they haven’t?” Ruby asks with a raised eyebrow.

Annie looks at Beth, then Rio, then back at Beth.

Stan laughs as he tops up their glasses. “I’m pretty sure those two fucked their way across the known world together.”

“No, we didn’t,” Beth insists.

“They did this thing,” Ruby says, organizing her cards in her hand, “where they’d pick someone and they would compete to have sex with them. It was their way of dealing with their sexual tension.”

“Hey!” Beth protests. “Sometimes we both fucked the person.”

Rio grins. “She’s still bitter over Alexander.”

Beth throws a piece of bread at him, but he just moves so that he can catch it in his mouth and eats it.

“Alexander the Great,” he informs Annie. “In case you were wondering.”

Annie looks at him. “You fucked Alexander the Great?”

“Yeah, well I got the Henrys. When they were in their good looking stages,” Beth huffs.

Rio laughs. “That wasn’t hard. Besides, I got some of them first.”

“No, you didn’t,” Beth says, picking up her cards.

Rio nods.

“Well, you’re just pissed that Michelangelo didn’t paint you into the Sistine Chapel,” Beth snaps.

Annie pauses.

“I had to paint over it,” Beth explains, still angry that she’d had to. “It was a phenomenal likeness.”

——————————————————

Somewhere on the Atlantic, 2020

“You think about it?”

Beth looks over her shoulder at Rio as he joins her at the railing. “What?”

“Fucking,” he clarifies. “For old time’s sake.”

“I will push you overboard,” she tells him, leaning against the metal.

Rio laughs with his whole body sometimes. Not always, but when they’ve had a few days, all of them together and he’s started to relax, he does.

“I’d pull you with me. And that doesn’t answer my question.”

Beth doesn’t respond for a minute.

“I’m tired,” she finally says.

His hand comes up to rest on her back. “We all are.”

“No, Rio,” Beth goes on, “I’m _tired_. Tired of fighting, tired of trying to save something that doesn’t want to be saved.”

“This was your idea, remember?” he says. “I said we should become gods.”

She turns her head to look at him. His face turns serious when he sees her expression.

His hand falls away from her back, but only so that it can come up to her cheek. He cradles her face in his hands and looks her dead in the eye.

“You won’t leave me,” he says. “I won’t let you.”

He kisses her and it’s easy, oh so easy, to kiss him back. To stumble to her cabin and let him undress them both. She does feel more alive when she’s with him. Their bodies haven’t changed a bit since the last time that they did this, even though it’s been decades. His skin is still smooth in the places she’s seen him pierced by bullets, hit by shrapnel. His hands show no sign that they were ever mangled by a machine once, saving Ruby.

Just like hers doesn’t have any signs of the time that she’d taken a sword for him (even though he hadn’t needed it, he would have been fine, just like she was), the wounds he’s given her sparring, the breaking of so many bones that she’s surprised she can even stand.

Rio just knows where those spots are, pays special attention to the blank skin under his fingers and lips.

Before he pushes into her, he pulls back. “Will you regret this?” he asks, serious.

Beth shakes her head and he takes her at her word. He makes her cry out with the rough first thrust, but he’s gentle after that.

Some of the words that come out of his mouth as he makes love to her - there’s no other way to describe it - are from long dead languages. But they come alive on his tongue and Beth knows what they mean, is the only other person left who still knows them.

She can’t say them back, not right now.

————————————————

582 BC, Gaul

The first time that Beth dies, she wakes to a burned home with nothing in it but bodies.

She buries them herself, still not comprehending how she survived.

It’s a mere accident, she thinks, until she dies the second time. And the third.

She wanders for four years before a man in Rome that she’s been seeing in her dreams stops her in the street and smiles.

“Sister,” he says, “I’ve been looking for you.”

———————————————

South Korea, 2013

The world grows and contracts, but as technology grows stronger, the world has become increasingly difficult for them.

At first, it hadn’t been so bad. After all, faces repeat. Beth had once walked into a town in the Andes only to be met with a face that she’d seen hundreds of years before. It hadn’t been the same woman, just the same features all over again. 

It hadn’t been a concern if they were in a photograph, it could be explained away as an ancestor.

Then photography had become more common.

And then more common.

Then video, then surveillance, satellites, facial recognition.

The world is getting smaller.

“Tell me about it,” Annie grouses as she does her best to eat through the restaurant’s entire supply of black bean noodles. “Speaking of, I ran into an old friend recently.”

Beth tenses. Annie only ever calls one person old friend. Some joke that Beth’s never really understood.

“That’s nice,” she says.

“He asked how you were doing.” Annie’s watching her like a hawk now. “I said you were the same as usual.”

“Uh huh.” Beth busies herself refilling her plate.

Annie drops her chopsticks. “What’s wrong with you two?”

Beth lifts her head. “Wrong? Nothing’s wrong.”

“Then why are you both moping on opposite sides of the globe?” Annie shakes her head. “If I had someone like that, I would never —“

“Yeah, well you don’t,” Beth snaps without thinking, immediately regretting it.

Annie looks away. “You don’t get it. The two of you have each other. Stan and Ruby. I’m the odd one out.”

“It’s not that simple,” Beth replies. “You think it’s easy after a millennium together? We need to be apart sometimes.”

It’s something that they learned the hard way after a few hundred years together. They’d started to resent one another, had hated sharing everything. They weren’t easy like Stan and Ruby. They needed to be apart if they wanted those moments together.

But there’s no way to explain that to Annie, who is so much more alone than the rest of them, no matter how much they insist otherwise.

It isn’t fair, their life.

———————————————

Portugal, 2020

When Rio sits down next to her and begins to cut into a pomegranate, she knows that he’s not angry that she left the bed, the ship, in search of some stable ground. She stays silent as he pulls it open, spilling a few seeds onto the table. He hands her a few and she accepts.

“You know,” she says, “you can get them so that they’re already cut up.”

“You aren’t the only one who likes to do things the old fashioned way,” he retorts, handing her more seeds. She knows better than to offer some to him.

He doesn’t like pomegranate.

Too bitter, he always says.

He means the memories.

But he still brings them to her and cuts them open even if he never takes any for himself. Rio has many ways of taking care of her.

Has spent centuries doing it.

The decades after the Inquisition when Beth had been too frightened to go near humans, he’d been the one to go to the cities and towns to get what they needed, then come back to the cave that she’d holed herself in. Held her as she screamed and cried at what they’d intended to do.

She still dreams of that iron casket, the sight of the ship just beyond.

Rio and Stan had come, along with some others, to save her just in time. She knows that Ruby still thinks of it too, even though it had been meant for Beth. If the men had managed it, Ruby and the others would have felt it as she died and awoke again and again on the bottom of the ocean.

The memory turns the fruit rotten in her mouth, and she spits them out.

“What’s wrong?” Rio asks.

“Nothing.”

“Liar,” he says, setting down the pomegranate. “What are you thinking about?”

Beth doesn’t reply.

“Oh,” he says after a minute.

He reaches out and takes her hand. “I will never leave you alone,” he promises.

She knows that he means it, but there’s no way to make promises like that, not for them. 

One day, it’s just the last life. It’s the last death, the one that counts.

Beth doesn’t know if she’s scared of it or longs for it.

So she curls her fingers around Rio’s and nods.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to medievalraven and neveroffanon for beta-ing! Title from Madalen Duke's Born Alone, Die Alone (which is in The Old Guard, which you should all go watch). As always, if there's something that you think needs to be tagged/warned for, please let me know.


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